In a survey released on Monday by Inter-American Security Watch, a majority of Americans—51 percent to 38 percent—said they initially favored Obama’s efforts to restore ties with Cuba and lift travel and financial restrictions. However, those numbers reversed when the respondents were informed of the latest actions by the Castro regime.

Columbian authorities halted a Chinese ship en route to Cuba earlier this month after discovering illegal explosives and other arms in its cargo, which was supposed to only contain grain. That followed an attempt by a North Korean ship in 2013 to smuggle 240 tons of Cuban weapons concealed under bags of sugar. After being told about the illicit arms shipments, 63 percent of American voters said they opposed removing U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

Cuba also continues to harbor dozens of U.S. fugitives accused of committing murder and acts of terrorism. When informed of Cuba’s practice of offering asylum to Americans wanted for murder and terrorism, 63 percent said they were against removing sanctions, and 68 percent supported keeping the Castro regime on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Overall, 64 percent of Americans said sanctions should remain in place until the Cuban government frees all political prisoners and stages multi-party elections. The Castro regime subjected dissidents to nearly 9,000 short-term detentions last year, a sharp increase compared with recent years.

OnMessage Inc. conducted the poll among 700 likely voters with an oversample of 300 likely Cuban American voters. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.7 percent.

“So wouldn’t a lack of indictment mean fear for black people all over this country and effectively a green light to further police violence?” Everest asked.

“And second, I would like to pose to you how you would respond to the call by Carl Dixon and many others from the Revolutionary Communist Party that if Darren Wilson is not indicted to murder, the country be brought to a halt through energetic civil disobedience by millions of people?”

It is probably safe to say that virtually nobody has heard of Carl Dixon and his Revolutionary Communist Party’s call to disobedience, and that the country will shut down by “millions of people” in support of some sort of communist revolution.

It is worth noting that Revolution Newspaper’s Facebook page has only 824 likes.

Gov. Nixon was quick to respond to Everest’s inquiry, and moved the press conference along.

“I do not know what the grand jury has ruled, nor do I know what the prosecutor will announce at 8:00 tonight.” Nixon said.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/issues/communist-interrupts-ferguson-press-conference/feed/0New York Times Wants Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants, Unless They’re Cuban Doctors Fleeing Communismhttp://freebeacon.com/blog/new-york-times-wants-amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants-none-for-cuban-doctors-trying-to-come-here-legally/
http://freebeacon.com/blog/new-york-times-wants-amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants-none-for-cuban-doctors-trying-to-come-here-legally/#commentsMon, 17 Nov 2014 22:19:07 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?post_type=blog&p=358885New York Times editorial board supports comprehensive immigration reform that would give millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. In the meantime, the Times’ editors want President Obama to take “big and bold” action on his own that would effectively legalize millions of unauthorized immigrants.
But while the Times does not appear to have a problem with illegal immigration, its editors have found at least one form of legal immigration they want to stop. In an editorial published on Sunday, the board lamented the “Cuban brain drain” brought on by U.S. immigration policy. Specifically, they want to do away with a program allowing highly trained Cuban doctors to defect to the United States while serving on medical missions abroad:]]>The New York Times editorial board supports comprehensive immigration reform that would give millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. In the meantime, the Times’ editors want President Obama to take “big and bold” action on his own that would effectively legalize millions of unauthorized immigrants.

But while the Times does not appear to have a problem with illegal immigration, its editors have found at least one form of legal immigration they want to stop. In an editorial published on Sunday, the board lamented the “Cuban brain drain” brought on by U.S. immigration policy. Specifically, they want to do away with a program allowing highly trained Cuban doctors to defect to the United States while serving on medical missions abroad:

There is much to criticize about Washington’s failed policies toward Cuba and the embargo it has imposed on the island for decades. But the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which in the last fiscal year enabled 1,278 Cubans to defect while on overseas assignments, a record number, is particularly hard to justify.

It is incongruous for the United States to value the contributions of Cuban doctors who are sent by their government to assist in international crises like the 2010 Haiti earthquake while working to subvert that government by making defection so easy.

American immigration policy should give priority to the world’s neediest refugees and persecuted people. It should not be used to exacerbate the brain drain of an adversarial nation at a time when improved relations between the two countries are a worthwhile, realistic goal.

The Times goes on to note that, by the way, some of the Cuban doctors seeking asylum have complained of coercion and wage garnishment. As the Los Angeles Timesreported last month, the Cuban government keeps about 10,000 healthcare workers in Venezuela as “payment” for Venezuelan oil. Many have tried to escape what they describe as “crushing” workloads:

Nelia, a 29-year-old general practitioner from Santiago de Cuba, arrived in Bogota last month after what she said was a nightmarish year working in Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro program in the city of Valencia. She declined to disclose her last name for fear of reprisal back home.

Nelia said her disillusionment started on her arrival in Caracas’ Maiquetia airport in mid-2013. She and several colleagues waited there for two days, sometimes sleeping in chairs, before authorities assigned her to a clinic in Valencia, she said.

“It was all a trick. They tell you how great it’s going to be, how you will able to buy things and how grateful Venezuelans are to have you. Then comes the shock of the reality,” Nelia said. Her clinic in Valencia had no air conditioning and much of the ultrasound equipment she was supposed to use to examine pregnant women was broken.

If the Times’ editors get their way, these doctors would be out of luck. Unless, of course, the Cuban government follows their advice to “compensate medical personnel more generously.” Until then, the United States will continue to welcome hundreds of highly trained medical professionals fleeing persecution to its shores. What a tragedy.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/blog/new-york-times-wants-amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants-none-for-cuban-doctors-trying-to-come-here-legally/feed/0Watch Ukrainian Protesters Tear Down a Lenin Statuehttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/watch-ukrainian-protesters-tear-down-a-lenin-statue/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/watch-ukrainian-protesters-tear-down-a-lenin-statue/#commentsTue, 30 Sep 2014 15:17:59 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=333724Ukrainian protesters recently sent a clear message to their Russian adversaries by tearing down a statue of former communist leader Vladimir Lenin. Protesters involved in the demolition ignored threats from their own government, according to CNS News.

Thousands of protesters in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv toppled a Soviet-era statue of Vladimir Lenin on Sunday.

Ukraine’s interior ministry briefly threatened up to five years in prison if the monument was toppled. Undeterred, protesters sawed off the statue’s legs, and then used ropes to pull the communist idol to the ground.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/watch-ukrainian-protesters-tear-down-a-lenin-statue/feed/0European Victims of Communism, Fascism to Be Honored on Black Ribbon Dayhttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/european-victims-of-communism-fascism-to-be-honored-on-black-ribbon-day/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/european-victims-of-communism-fascism-to-be-honored-on-black-ribbon-day/#commentsFri, 22 Aug 2014 20:00:23 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=314755The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation will honor the millions of Europeans who suffered and died under the Nazi and Soviet Union regimes on Saturday, in remembrance of Black Ribbon Day.

August 23, 2014 marks the 75-year anniversary of a pact between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin that ignited the Second World War, an agreement of non-aggression that allowed the fascist and communist regimes to divide up Europe.

The day now serves as a reminder of the dangers of totalitarianism, and an opportunity to educate the world about lesser-known details of what became the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

“In the 1980s, in the U.S. and in Western Europe there were refugee communities from the captive nations of Europe, the Baltic countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, others, who began to use August 23 as Black Ribbon Day as a day to protest the Soviet Union and to make the point to Americans and Westerners that the people living behind the Iron Curtain were living under totalitarian regimes,” Marion Smith the executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview.

“August 23 is significant and they chose that day because it is the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which is usually called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,” he said. The pact included a secret protocol to divide Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

“The significant thing about the pact was that it meant Hitler could—once he took parts of Poland—he could turn west and invade Western Europe without having to fear that Stalin would attack him,” Smith said. “Within just a few days of them signing this accord Hitler invaded Poland.”

Smith argues that Stalin was “directly complicit” in the start of World War II.

“This is of course very different from the normal narrative that is printed in schools throughout the country about Stalin and about the Soviet Union and their role in World War II,” he said. “Stalin is often viewed as an allied commander who helped defeat Hitler, when in fact Stalin was a war criminal before, during, and after World War II and because of this accord with Hitler, was directly responsible for helping to start World War II.”

In May, the House of Representatives passed an amendment brought by Rep. John Shimkus (R., Ill.) that designating August 23 as Black Ribbon Day to honor victims under the Nazi and Soviet regimes. The legislation awaits action in the Senate.

Smith said it is a “no-brainer” for Congress to pass the resolution, and join the European Union, Canada, and numerous other countries that commemorate Black Ribbon Day. Smith and his organization are distributing copies of Lest We Forget: Memory of Totalitarianism in Europe, a book that highlights the stories of 30 people who experienced horrors under totalitarian regimes in Europe, to all members of Congress and their staff.

“We hope that this will help them understand why this is a commemorative day that the United States should acknowledge,” Smith said.

The organization will hold a wreath-laying ceremony at 10 a.m. on Saturday at the Victims of Communism Memorial, located at the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue NW.

Smith said the event is an opportunity to remind people that communism, which is responsible for approximately 100 million dead in the last century, still lives on.

“You had here a Nazi regime and a communist Soviet regime cooperating, working together to bring death and destruction to Europe at the start of WWII,” he said. “But then working together to commit large scale atrocities and genocide.”

“There are instances where the Soviet’s secret police were rounding up German Jews who had escaped from Germany to the Soviet Union—they were rounding them up and giving them over to the SS,” Smith said. “And this is just a story that is not often known.”

“August 23 is the day that we hope in the future many more Americans and members of Congress will use the opportunity to commemorate the victims of totalitarianism in Europe,” he added. “Of course it’s focused on Europe, but communism is an ideology that still governs people’s lives. It lives on in five existing communist states and in those five countries roughly 1.5 billion people, or 20 percent of the world’s population.”

“Both ideologies are terrible, but one is largely gone and one lives on,” Smith said.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/european-victims-of-communism-fascism-to-be-honored-on-black-ribbon-day/feed/0Dem Rep: Communism Works!http://freebeacon.com/politics/dem-rep-communism-works/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/dem-rep-communism-works/#commentsWed, 21 May 2014 12:30:31 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=271126Rep. Joe Garcia (D., Fla.) suggested “communism works” while discussing the U.S.-Mexico border and the amount of money and federal government jobs that are offered in border towns such as El Paso, Texas.

“The safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be across the border from the most dangerous city in the America’s, which is Juarez. Right?” Garcia asked a Google Hangout participant.

“Two of the safest cities in America are on the border with Mexico. Of course, the reason is we’ve proved that communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there is no crime,” Garcia said.

It should be noted that Rep. Garcia has had a rough two weeks. Last week, he was exposed for eating his own ear wax.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/dem-rep-communism-works/feed/0Harvard Elites ‘Explore’ Havanahttp://freebeacon.com/blog/harvard-elites-explore-havana/
http://freebeacon.com/blog/harvard-elites-explore-havana/#commentsFri, 16 May 2014 16:31:23 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?post_type=blog&p=269242excursion. (Well, technically it’s too late, but there’s always next year.)
The trip, which was made possible by a “people-to-people” exchange license granted by the United States Treasury, promises to provide “meaningful interactions with Cuban people.”
From the official program:]]>Did you go to Harvard? Are you eager to visit a communist nation, but don’t want to travel to China or Vietnam? Great! You can sign up for an “Exploring Havana, Cuba” excursion. (Well, technically it’s too late, but there’s always next year.)

The trip, which was made possible by a “people-to-people” exchange license granted by the United States Treasury, promises to provide “meaningful interactions with Cuban people.”

Participants attend a full daily schedule of activities that include lectures, roundtable discussions and break-out sessions, private performances, artistic demonstrations and interpretations, and informal conversations, all delivered by local Cubans.

… Through intriguing and varied interactions with Cuban people, you will come away with a deeper understanding of Cuba’s history, where it is today, and where it might be in ten years’ time.

These Harvard trips to Cuba are offered only to Harvard alumni and not to the general public.

So, no commoners. The program guide does warn that many Western comforts won’t be available in Cuba, due to “tight political control,” as well as the U.S. trade embargo.

It not immediately clear whether the trip’s itinerary includes a “roundtable discussion” with Alan Gross, the U.S. government contractor who has been imprisoned in Cuba for more than four years and who recently announced a hunger strike to protest the “mistruths, deceptions, and inaction by both governments” with respect to his “shameful ordeal.”

It is also not known whether there will be any “informal conversations” with local political prisoners. According to Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government “continues to rely on arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate individuals who exercise their fundamental rights.”

The disclosure of the military aspects of the underground rail system followed completion and opening of a new subway line in the Chinese capital Dec. 30, along with the extension of several other lines. The subway upgrade is part of an effort to ease gridlocked traffic in the city of 20 million people.

According to Chinese civil defense officials quoted Dec. 5 in the Global Times, a newspaper published by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the subway can “withstand a nuclear or poison gas attack.”

A U.S. official said the disclosure of the subway’s capabilities to withstand attack is unusual since it highlights Beijing’s strategic nuclear modernization program, something normally kept secret from state-controlled media. The strategic nuclear buildup includes the expansion of offensive nuclear forces, missile defenses, and anti-satellite arms.

China is building new long-range mobile missiles, including the DF-41, and plans to deploy up to eight new ballistic missile submarines. Reports from Asia indicate the Chinese military is also planning to build new long-range strategic nuclear bombers.

Russia too is expanding its nuclear forces with new submarines and missiles. Moscow announced last year that it is also constructing some 5,000 underground bomb shelters in Russia’s capital in anticipation of a possible future nuclear conflict.

By contrast, the U.S. government has done little to bolster civil defense measures, preferring the largely outdated concept of mutual assured destruction that leaves populations vulnerable to attack and building only limited missile defenses that the Obama administration has said are not designed to counter Chinese or Russian nuclear strikes.

The Obama administration instead is seeking deep cuts in U.S. nuclear forces as part of President Barack Obama’s policy of seeking the elimination of all nuclear arms.

According to the Global Times report, the new subway lines were “designed to be used in the event of an emergency, for underground evacuation from one station to another, emergency shelter, and storage for emergency supplies.”

A military engineer identified only as Hu and as part of the Chinese military’s Second Artillery Corps, which builds and deploys China’s nuclear arsenal, helped design the civil defense aspects of the subway.

Special steel-reinforced gates installed on all subway tunnels and used to separate stations are one key feature of the reinforced subway. Hu said it is designed to protect people who seek shelter during a heavy storm, toxic gas attack, or a nuclear strike.

“The station has three hours of breathable air after the gates are closed, isolating the station from the outside world,” Hu was quoted as saying.

“Although each gate weighs around 7 tons, it takes just three minutes for two adults to open or close it manually,” she said.

The new blast gates were introduced into subway construction projects in 2007.

A second Chinese official, identified in the report as Liang, said each subway also has an air filtration system in case of a chemical weapons gas attack. The system is designed to keep air flowing into the station.

“People can actually shelter in the subway for more than three hours because of this system,” Liang said.

Above-ground subway exits also can be sealed during an attack, Liang said, using heavy blast doors concealed behind temporary walls.

Additional civil defense barriers and doors are being installed in the Beijing subway later, according to Cao Yanping, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Civil Air-Raid Shelter.

Jiang Hao, a Chinese military engineer from the 4th Engineer Design & Research Institute of General Staff Department, told the newspaper that blast gates already are in use in cities such as Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province, and Shenyang, in Liaoning Province.

“The new facilities also have other defensive capabilities like emergency communication equipment at each station, which makes effective communication possible during a conflict,” Jiang Hao, the engineer, told reporters in Beijing.

China’s network of underground tunnels for nuclear weapons and missiles was disclosed only recently, and highlighted in Georgetown University’s Asian Arms Control Project, dubbed it China’s Underground Great Wall.

The Pentagon first disclosed the nuclear tunnel complex stretching an estimated 3,000 miles in its annual report to Congress on the Chinese military in 2011.

“China’s strategic missile force, the Second Artillery Corps (SAC), has developed and utilized [underground facilities] since deploying its oldest liquid-fueled missile systems and continues to utilize them to protect and conceal their newest and most modern solid-fueled mobile missiles,” the report stated.

The facilities are used for storing and hiding missiles and nuclear warheads, and for command bunkers hardened against nuclear attacks.

China has been tunneling and hiding its nuclear forces since the early 1950s but the first public disclosure of the effort came in 2010 during the anniversary of the Second Artillery Corps.

Until then, both Beijing and the Pentagon kept most details of Chinese underground nuclear facilities and arms secret.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/national-security/war-preparation-indicator/feed/0Pro-democracy Protest in China After Newspaper Censoredhttp://freebeacon.com/politics/pro-democracy-protest-in-china-after-newspaper-censored/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/pro-democracy-protest-in-china-after-newspaper-censored/#commentsMon, 07 Jan 2013 17:27:19 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=48779A pro-democracy demonstration erupted on Monday in China’s Guangdong province after the government censored an editorial in the reform newspaper the Southern Weekly, reports the Associated Press.

The scholars and protesters were acting in support of the Southern Weekly in its confrontation with a top censor after the publication was forced to change a New Year’s editorial calling for political reform into a tribute praising the ruling Communist Party. Rumors circulated that at least one of the newspaper’s news departments was going on strike, but they could not be immediately confirmed.

Protesters, including middle school students and white-collar workers, gathered outside the offices of the newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou to lay flowers at the gate, hold signs and shout slogans calling for freedom of speech, political reform, constitutional governance and democracy. […]

The protest came as 18 Chinese academics signed an open letter calling for the dismissal of Tuo Zhen, a provincial propaganda minister blamed for the censorship. The scholars included legal professors, liberal economists, historians and writers.

The protest comes after the government shut down the online political magazine, Yanhuang Chunqiu (or China Through the Ages), because it posted an article on constitutional rights and political reform.

]]>http://freebeacon.com/politics/pro-democracy-protest-in-china-after-newspaper-censored/feed/0Wang on Trialhttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-begins-secret-treason-trial-for-defector/
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-begins-secret-treason-trial-for-defector/#commentsMon, 17 Sep 2012 19:03:56 +0000http://freebeacon.com/?p=27911China’s government on Monday began the trial of Wang Lijun, the senior Communist Party police official who sought to defect to a U.S. consulate but was turned away, with a secret hearing in southern China.

Wang has been charged with “defection” and abuse of authority. The Chinese term for the crime of defection is a combination of treason and flight.

Plans to file the treason charges were first reported by the Free Beacon Aug. 16.

China’s government appears to have timed the trial to coincide with the visit to Beijing by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Observers say the timing suggests Chinese officials are sending a political signal to other potential defectors who, like Wang, might seek to cooperate with the United States, a country portrayed daily in state-controlled media as China’s main enemy.

Wang set off China’s biggest political scandal in decades on Feb. 6 when he sought refuge at the U.S. Consulate Chengdu, in southern China, after fleeing the neighboring city of Chongqing and his former boss, Communist Party regional chief Bo Xilai.

After 33 hours inside the consulate, Wang was turned over to China’s Ministry of State Security and disappeared from public view.

Chinese officials revealed after the attempted defection that armored personnel carriers had been sent from Chongqing to Chengdu as part of a plan by Bo to use force against the consulate if needed to prevent Wang from defecting.

Inside the consulate, Wang provided documents to U.S. officials and also revealed that Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai were behind the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, who was found dead in a Chongqing hotel last November. In a high-profile political case, Gu and an associated were convicted of the murder. Four other Chongqing police officials were also convicted of covering up the crime.

The Wang trial is viewed as the final step prior to the Communist Party’s potentially most unsettling move—the possible arrest and imprisonment of Bo Xilai, who until Wang’s attempted defection had been slated for promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, the nine-member collective dictatorship that rules China.

U.S. officials have said Wang sought political asylum while at the embassy but his appeal was rejected by senior Obama administration officials, including officials within the office of Vice President Joe Biden, who were concerned that granting the defector’s request would upset relations with China, including the impending visit to the United States by Xi Jinping, China’s next supreme leader.

White House officials later denied that Biden or his office influenced the U.S. decision or that President Obama took part in deciding the defector’s fate. The president was informed of the defection, they said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, initially asked for an investigation into the apparent mishandling of the defection and asked to see all State Department cables and email on the incident.

Ros-Lehtinen, however, later declined to comment on the outcome any briefings on the case or committee activities related to the affairs.

Wang was initially to be tried at an open judicial proceeding in Chengdu but authorities closed the hearing claiming the case involved state secrets, Associated Press reported from Chengdu.

“It was closed according to Chinese law because it involves state secrets,” Wang’s defense lawyer Wang Yuncai told the news service.

The public hearing for the trial is set for Tuesday and large numbers of news reporters have traveled to Chengdu to observe the proceedings. Chinese authorities initially said tickets for seating at the hearing would be available but later said that none were available for the general public.

In the past, such charges against a former official almost certainly would result in a death penalty.

However, Wang, because of his role in identifying the murder of Heywood by Bo’s wife, is now expected to receive a lengthy prison term instead.

A former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials, Kenneth deGraffenreid, has said the administration’s mishandling of the Wang defection is “a major intelligence and policy failure—the loss of a potentially valuable source on a regime whose internal politics remain opaque to us, despite the $100 billion we spend on the intelligence community.”